No, but I did have the ribs on my left side broken so badly that the former break sights are visible without need of x-rays, you can see where the bone is deformed even now, 40 years later, by looking at my side....That's just one assault, there were others.

Congratulations. You have a valid basis to get a Maryland Concealed Weapons Permit. Me, I'm only about 1/3 of the way there.

Well, except none of that happened in Maryland...

I've also had the hubcaps shot off my car while driving, been twice attacked by knife-wielding attackers, been beat up by multiple people at once... sure, think I probably qualify for the assaulted multiple times category. Except all of that occurred prior to my turning 18 so I couldn't have gotten a gun anyway. Also has a lot to do with why I got the hell out of Dodge Detroit as soon as I could.

And I'm not really interested in playing one-upmanship in the assault category.

9-1-1? Hey, good luck texting 911, the system in Southern MD then wasn't set up for text 911 and a few years later with a potential CO2 issue here in the DC burbs, the text 911 system didn't work either.

So it's call 911, and repeat yourself slowly when you hear a voice on the other end and kind of sort of pray/hope/whatever that they heard you right and show up in the right place.

You on the other hand, can keep up a running commentary on the phone with verbal support from the dispatcher as the police are on the way.

Except when all of that happened to me - the 1970's - there were no cell phones, certainly no texting, and 911 was not available in quite a few areas. When I moved to Chicago the city itself had 911 but the surrounding suburbs did not, as just one example. It wasn't until the late 1980's that even 50% of the US population had access to 911 services.

After talking to a number of friends in real life who are long time gun owners, and trying out various guns, I decided on a .38 because I can control it, and several people whose opinions I value recommended a revolver over semi-auto for a first time gun owner.

"Since you like small cartridges, have you considered the Glock 42 in .380 ACP?"

Yes. But so far I have not located one in my price range. Regrettably, my finances are still limited despite some improvement in recent years.

I gotta ask you...why do you want to obtain a "Saturday Night Special" for 'defense'? There's no reason for you to buy such a junky gun with a weak cartridge that lets the manufacturer use junk pot steel because of the lower chamber pressure of .38 special vs 9mm, unless of course, you want a cheap, easily concealable throwaway gun for murder.

Or a cheap gun with which I can reliably hit a target, will not cost a lot to buy ammo to improve my skills, and could be concealed relatively easily on my person if I decide to opt for a concealed carry permit. I expect that after some time I will either decide I don't need a gun after all, or I might "move up" to a larger caliber as my skills/strength improve in that area.

Moreover, I am worried about your mental state, since you are approaching senior citizen age.

Not quite that old yet, thankyouverymuch.

I think you need to be evaluated yearly on your mental competency to own such a murder weapon, because we get stories every year about senior citizens who get confused about where they are in their cars, leading to much hilarity.

I can still pass an FAA medical to fly airplanes, I expect passing a physical to drive cars, own guns, or the like would not be an issue.

And if ever I get so dotty I am not longer safe to handle firearms I would hope there is a mechanism for removing them from my grasp, for the sake of the safety of others.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Then we're back to damages - you're far more likely to survive being shot with a .38 than an AR-15. Which is one reason I've had some folks try to argue me out of a .38 and into something "bigger". STOPPING POWER!!!! Sure, you can still rack up a body count with .38's but you'll get a higher number of injured vs. fatalities. Which some would see as an improvement (although not much of one).

The biggest thing that has changed things over the last 25 years in pistols (besides GLOCKS) is much improved modern hollowpoint rounds, dramatically improving the stopping power of weaker calibers.

In 1990, the FBI rated both the 9mm and their (then) standard .38 Special (158-gr hollowpoint) as having 67.5% success rate; while only 10mm, .45 ACP and .357 Magnum could score above 90%. It's why the FBI went to 10mm Auto for a brief period.

But a $$$ of money was thrown at bullet research by the ammo manufacturers, and now the .38/.380 round is no longer as weak due to much improved and reliable bullet expansion.

One recommendation I've had is to practice with inexpensive rounds and load hollowpoints for when the gun is for actual self-defense - not only do the hollowpoints have more stopping power, they are also less inclined to overpenetration, which is safer for those I am NOT targeting.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

One recommendation I've had is to practice with inexpensive rounds and load hollowpoints for when the gun is for actual self-defense - not only do the hollowpoints have more stopping power, they are also less inclined to overpenetration, which is safer for those I am NOT targeting.

That may work for general gun muscle memory (indexing, firing, rotating cylinder(s) ), but I highly suggest you budget money for actual live shoots with your self defense loadouts; because the ballistics of the cheap rounds will be different than the hollowpoints.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

I've also had the benefit of friends who have taken me out to a range and let me shoot a variety of firearms and loads. I still have a lot to learn, I realize that.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Because in the old days, they were a tool to prevent blacks from carrying weapons, so that they would be defenseless against terrorism by whites in general and the Ku Klux Klan in particular.

But this did not turn them into gun ownership advocates. For one, because they have little collective experience of defending themselves against tyranny with guns. Indeed, they were on the receiving end of vast amounts of brutality and oppression for centuries, and "Second Amendment solutions" never did them a damn bit of good.

But also because the threat profile has changed.

So blacks today are in general more likely to lean in favor of gun control, simply because the typical law-abiding black citizen is more likely to be stuck living next to a bunch of criminals, and to very, VERY much wish that criminals in this country didn't have such easy access to guns. They're also more likely to live in an area with poor mental health services (more crazy people with access to guns) and so on. All in all, they're getting the 'bitter' side of widespread American gun ownership, not the 'sweet' side, insofar as the 'sweet' side actually exists. Today, the average black person is far more likely to be killed in an armed robbery or gang shooting (usually by another black person) than they are to be lynched by the KKK. And while said citizen might conceivably be able to protect themselves from that with a gun, overall weapon proliferation is seen as making the problem worse, not better.

It's no different from, say, evolution of fighter aircraft from pure gun combatants to pure missile combatants, back to at least a bit of gun capability, and now back towards pure missile combat again with the rise of BVR engagements. The incentives determine what is and is not desired.

On the other hand, it would tend to overshoot just as 'percent of people who own a gun' might undershoot. There are probably people out there who own guns, but whose spouses, children, or roommates kind of wish didn't. Or are at best ambivalent about the whole thing.

Is that based on a study I could access? That sounds like fascinating reading.

"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist

"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin

What's happening is the "Elmer Fudd" hunting crowd is decreasing as a percentage of the US population, giving an impression of overt gun ownership declining...

[...]

because the median age of the US population is like 36~ and hunting is a somewhat active sport; so modern sporting rifles are taking over back country hunting.

EDIT: This also means that Wayne "Vidya Games are the Debbil!" LaPierre is not long for the NRA; as the average gun owner nowadays grew up on Doom. He's still in that phase of his life where he's having fun, building a family etc, no time for political activism...but when he gets to middle age....

Of course, if that trend continues it's going to mean that hunting as an industry, pastime and culture in the United States will be pretty much dead by the time the average gun owner's kids are old enough to be thinking about buying a gun of their own.

Which isn't surprising, really. All the young people abandoning the small towns to find work in the cities, or raise a family somewhere there's more for their kids to do than drink and smoke and get into trouble, they're not going to get to do much hunting. It's a bit of an expensive hobby if you have to drive for half a day just to find any woods that aren't private property or a national park.

Which is kind of a shame in a lot of ways, but short of making it illegal to invent new and better farm machinery or energy tech there's not much to be done about it.

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin

On the other hand, it would tend to overshoot just as 'percent of people who own a gun' might undershoot. There are probably people out there who own guns, but whose spouses, children, or roommates kind of wish didn't. Or are at best ambivalent about the whole thing.

Is that based on a study I could access? That sounds like fascinating reading.

Honestly, it is not, it's simply based on the assumption that people have a range of views and that not everyone likes everything that is done by the people they live with. Think about it.

It's like, if I wanted to measure the percentage of the population who are pro-neatness, I could start by "percentage of people who clean and tidy up a lot." But then Radagast might point out "wait, but maybe there are households full of people who like living in a neat home, and all rely on one person to do all the cleaning." And this is true. At the same time, there are also households where one person's high standard of cleanliness results in them constantly tidying things up whether the people who live with them want it or not, or pressuring people into cleaning more than they'd otherwise like.

So when we try to bring in "people who don't clean very much, but believe in lots of cleaning, because they rely on someone else to do it for them," the discussion becomes much more complicated, though that can still be an important place to take it.

I see no reason to expect the situation to be different with gun ownership.

I mean, it could be that literally every unarmed person who lives with a gun owner is themselves a gung-ho hoplophile who just happens not to own one themselves. But would you bet that way? This honestly strikes me as common sense

I never said people would like things done by cohabitants, or that they would dislike them. I said that they were stakeholders.

"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist

"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin

What's happening is the "Elmer Fudd" hunting crowd is decreasing as a percentage of the US population, giving an impression of overt gun ownership declining...

[...]

because the median age of the US population is like 36~ and hunting is a somewhat active sport; so modern sporting rifles are taking over back country hunting.

EDIT: This also means that Wayne "Vidya Games are the Debbil!" LaPierre is not long for the NRA; as the average gun owner nowadays grew up on Doom. He's still in that phase of his life where he's having fun, building a family etc, no time for political activism...but when he gets to middle age....

Of course, if that trend continues it's going to mean that hunting as an industry, pastime and culture in the United States will be pretty much dead by the time the average gun owner's kids are old enough to be thinking about buying a gun of their own.

Which isn't surprising, really. All the young people abandoning the small towns to find work in the cities, or raise a family somewhere there's more for their kids to do than drink and smoke and get into trouble, they're not going to get to do much hunting. It's a bit of an expensive hobby if you have to drive for half a day just to find any woods that aren't private property or a national park.

Which is kind of a shame in a lot of ways, but short of making it illegal to invent new and better farm machinery or energy tech there's not much to be done about it.

Likewise in the small town I am working in farming is still mainly family sized (norm in finland) but is still only a part of the economy. There's hightech manufacturing and electronics, even a company specializing in 3D media and CAD stuff. There's stuff happening here, new companies being founded, etc, etc.

In fact the bit about there is nothing todo here but drugs and crime I find personally very offensive about us people living here, like we're dumb fucks who don't know bad we got it and oh our poor children who have to live here and be so bored and without future. We do other stuff, maybe not stuff you do for fun, but there's more stuff and activities to do than there is time for... Frankly human beings need a bit of boredom and downtime on the daily to function properly, making time for boredom is harder than being bored in my experience.

I'm a bit tired of this doom and gloom about small places, IIRC over 50% of young americans wanted to live in a small town in recent polls, a finnish poll last year found Helsinki would lose 30% of their inhabitants overnight if they could find work elsewhere.

What I am seeing is a long running development in the world that has been run by big corporations towards bigger units and cities, but that also that a sizable faction of humanity does not share or want this vision of the hyper urban future, but is being forced into it. We've been force fed the same TINA story here as with neoliberalism (there is no alternative), but I reject that narrative, and more and more people are doing the same. The future is what we want it to be.

Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.

I think small town Finland may have somewhat different dynamics than small town America, though I'm sure there are similarities.

Probably.

Like that quote about 50% of young Americans wanting to live in small towns-- all well and good... but they'll still want malls, they'll still want social activities, a variety of restaurants to go to, sports events, and so forth. You don't get that so much in small towns.

Small towns in the US are simply not really a viable option when looking for work, either. Unless it's some unusual circumstance like close proximity to a popular city making it an attractive suburb, or a large manufacturer running a big factory where most of the people in town work, there just aren't going to be many jobs that aren't already filled in most small towns. Particularly true in rural areas. The populations just don't support job creation. The only exception is seasonal agricultural work, but often it's far cheaper for the farms to just ship in a bunch of migrants. The lack of employment does lead to other issues like poverty, crime, and drug abuse, especially when you remember that this is the US we're talking about here-- social support isn't a thing, much unlike it is in Europe. That's not to say that you don't get poverty and crime etcetera in cities... but in those cases it's not because of a lack of population.

EDIT: And as for hunting and other outdoor recreation, I haven't done the research but I suspect hunting will more or less continue-- people will just be more likely to drive out from the city to the country. Driving long distances to do stuff just isn't that unusual in the USA.

"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."

—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law

"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is suing Florida to block new gun-control laws in the state.
The gun lobby filed the lawsuit hours after Governor Rick Scott signed the far-reaching bill, the culmination of three weeks of lobbying by survivors of the worst school shooting in 20 years.
While the legislation falls short of achieving the ban on assault-style weapons like the one used in the shooting, a move sought by survivors, it does raise the legal age of buying rifles in Florida to 21.
The bill - dubbed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act - also extends a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns and bans bump stocks, which allow guns to mimic fully automatic fire.
It also creates a so-called guardian programme which allows provision for teachers to arm themselves.

According to the 2014 ACS (American Community Survey) PUMS (Public Use Microdata Sample) file from the US Census Bureau, as tabulated here, 91% of US households have at least one car.

So it appears based off a crude extrapolation, about 45.5% of the US population is likely to have access to a firearm within their household based off brand new firearm/vehicle sales.

The existence of a large used market, with the durability of a firearm measured in decades skews this. A lot of people prefer 1970s S&W wheel guns, due to better QC and manufacturing by S&W then, than the current S&W which has "hillary holes" and shitty machinists.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

In contrast; German total gun registration (ZWEI DREAM KUM TRU) in 2012 claimed:

5.5 million firearms owned by 1.4 million people in 2012 (in a population of about 80,430,000), for:

6,838.24 guns per 100K (or in other words, 3.92 guns per owner)
1,740.64 owners per 100K (1.74% of total German population)

Isn't it funny how in Deutschland, we get about 4~ guns per owner as an average as well? It's almost like that is a handy round number for "eh, I think I have enough for now".

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

Numbers for Austria:
about 300,000 owners (+14% to last year) in a pop of 8.5 million), about a 978,000 firearms.

11,505.88 guns per 100k
3,529.4 owners per 100k

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay